This course offers a conceptual framework for understanding China that highlights the intersection of politics and economics. It shows that rather than develop into a full blown market economy, state and party officials at all levels of the political system maintain significant influence in economic development. Such a “political” economy has had both positive and negative outcomes, which we will assess in detail. We also look at the origins, views, backgrounds and relations among leaders, and how those leaders make decisions about public policy and try to get those decisions implemented down through the system. China has few formal institutions through which citizens can participate in politics, but we will study the strategies Chinese people use to try to influence their leaders’ decisions. Finally, we assess China’s future and whether rapid economic development and the emergence of a vibrant middle class will push China towards greater democracy or whether the single party system is likely to survive into the future. The course is a quite useful background for Chinese Politics Part 2 – China and the World.
Course Overview video: https://youtu.be/7FpNL67EbE4

JD

A well-structured, thoughtful course delivered by a true expert on the subject. One of the finest courses available throughout the entire Coursera platform.

RF

May 21, 2019

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

Comprehensive and practical. Prof. David Zweig's narrative teaching style and his first hand experience made the course content easy to understand.

À partir de la leçon

Orientation and Module 1: Models of the Chinese Political System and the Structure of the Chinese Party/State

Before you start with the content for Module 1, please watch the Course Overview, review the Assignments and Grading page, and introduce yourself to other learners who will be studying this course with you.

Enseigné par

David Zweig

Chair Professor of the Division of Social Science and Director of Center on China’s Transnational Relations

Transcription

[MUSIC] Now let me say a few words about the relationship between the army, the PLA, People's Liberation Army, and the Communist Party. Now, as i showed you before in this slide, right of this whole system. The key organization controlling the army is the Military Affairs Commission which you can see is directly under the Standing Committee of the Politburo. Okay, so that's very, very important. One of the key slogans that Mao Zedong used to use was that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. And that has significance in several ways. One is that if you're leading a revolutionary movement or leading a revolutionary war, say civil war, guerrilla war, you need an army. Otherwise, you can't win. And that's very true, the Communists beat the Nationalists. They couldn't have won without the army. Another way that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun is that whoever is the leadership. The leader in China really needs to control the military. So that when push comes to shove if there's a final shoot out or some kind of confrontation, if you have the military on your side you're likely to win. Now the CCP General Secretary has that authority because he is usually almost always the Chairman of the Military Affairs Commission. Which means that he can appoint people, he can appoint both members of the Military Affairs Commission which is his key body. So there's about 12 members and he can appoint those members. But he can also appoint key military leaders all the way down through the system, the chief of staff, the head of the navy, the head of the army. He will have the Chairman of the Military Affairs Commission will have the authority to put people in those positions and they will owe him loyalty. They will support him so that's really very important. Now, the Vice-Chairman of the Military Affairs Commission can be a civilian. Sometimes he can also be a military leader. Now, but all the other posts, all the other 12 posts, always belong to the military. Now it's interesting, and we'll spend more time talking about this in the next class when we talk about elites, is Jiang Zemin who was the leader of China from 1989 until about 2002. In 2002 he tried really hard and succeeded for two years, not to give up the position of the Chairman of the Military Affairs Commission even though he gave up the position of the General Secretary of the Communist Party. Now you might think that because this is a Communist Party system, being the General Secretary is the most important job, but in fact, Jiang Zemin believed that being the head of the military was more important. And so he held on to that post for two more years which gave him more leverage over Hu Jintao who was his successor. Now, how does the CCP control the military? Well as another slogan from Mao said, the Party must always control the gun, the gun must never control the Party. And so, the first way that the Party controls the army is through the Military Affairs Commission which we saw. It's directly the Military Affairs Commission, directly under the Party, the Politburo Standing Committee. Second is the army needs money. The army gets a budgetary allocation from the Ministry of Finance. For a number of years, the army, because it didn't feel it was getting enough money, went out and started all kinds of businesses. Hotels, companies, factories, high-tech industries. But in the late 1990s, early 2000s, they were forced out of business and now again they have to rely on the Ministry of Finance for and the State Council and the Politburo Standing Committee to get money. Another way is what are call the Political Commissars. And Political Commissars, this system, the Political Commissar system, is a system that was introduced by the Soviet Union, where every military unit has a party official who is in that unit and who maintains party authority. So while there may be messages coming down within the military hierarchy, again, like in the government there will be a parallel structure where there will be messages coming down within the party hierarchy. And those will come to the Political Commissar who then will have influence and try and persuade the military leader in that territorial level in that geographic area, try and persuade him to follow the Party's policy. There's also an overlapping membership in the Central Committee. Top military leaders are in the Central Committee, and now for about the last 20 years, each Politburo has two members of the military. Usually it's the Defense Minister who'll be on the Politburo, and the Chief of Staff, the head of the number one person in, sort of the day to day management of the army, he also will be on the Politburo. But there has not been a military member of the Politburo Standing Committee, that small group of five to nine. There has not been a member from the military on that committee, and that way, there's no one from the army on the inside when key decisions have to be taken.